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Identity, Domestication, and Family Structure in the Siberian Arctic 1926-1927

Identity, Domestication, and Family Structure in the Siberian Arctic 1926-1927 David G. Anderson - University of Aberdeen. Introduction : Map of Census Districts at 1.01.1927. A ‘polar’ population. A family of ‘Russian’ angartsy. Iurak shamaness , Turukhansk Territory 1926.

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Identity, Domestication, and Family Structure in the Siberian Arctic 1926-1927

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  1. Identity, Domestication, and Family Structure in the Siberian Arctic 1926-1927 David G. Anderson - University of Aberdeen

  2. Introduction: Map of Census Districts at 1.01.1927

  3. A ‘polar’ population A family of ‘Russian’ angartsy Iurakshamaness, Turukhansk Territory 1926

  4. The Argument • The Polar Census measured households defined economically and architecturally • These questions often did not match the social and ecological realities of the Northern landscapes surveyed. • As a result : • much relevant information was invisible or extremely illegible; • some of the questions were ‘subverted’ by informants with replies given in an entangled fashion; • some revealing information about households could appear in unexpected places, for example as information about domestic animals. • While the tabulated results give a unified picture of the ‘polar’ population, the manuscript sources give insights into a diversity of social structures.

  5. A complex survey, based on households

  6. A formal definition of an early Soviet household • a place where production occurred and where people resided on the census date; • people expected to be related to each other by blood and described in their relation to a ‘household head’; • there was a silent expectation that the household head would be male – not stated in the rulebooks

  7. Silences: Matrilineal kinship dynamics The Chirinda Church N.P Naumov 1-18 February 1927 [woman’s reindeer sled in foreground] “In Chapogyr’s tent” N.P. Naumov 29-31 March 1927

  8. Entangled forms: Reindeer Estates and Extended kinship Khristofor – 65* 600 330 260 105 100 450 14 1500 Sava – 60* Mikhail - 41 Egor - 20 Ivan Batulu Konstantin - 18 Gavril - 76 Ivan – 35* Khristofor - 24 Konstantin - 24 The Batulu lineage at Lake Yessei 1926-27 – 3959 reindeer reported Botulu family 9

  9. Unexpected Categories: Reindeer Skin Dwellings GAKK 769-1-428-025: Quantities of reindeer skin panels Iuraki in their skin lodge at Lapto Sale N.A. Ostroumov May 1927

  10. Unexpected Categories: Reindeer Skin Dwellings Of 6000 households in the database reindeer skin panels are recorded for just over half (3182). The maximum number of panels is 10 and the smallest is one. Most nomadic families recorded holding 4 panels. Larger reports of tent inventories are closely associated with a highly nomadic lifestyle, large numbers of reindeer, and likely extended family structures.

  11. Conclusion: Identity and Domestication • The household records of the Polar Census illustrate how census instrumentation structure the replies received. • Nevertheless, clues to alternate forms of family structure persist. • The Domus, or the domestic space, always implies the arrangement of material items and of architecture as it does people • Domestic relationships are therefore ’emplaced’ within the survey.

  12. Acknowledgements and Thanks www.abdn.ac.uk/polarcensus The State Archive of Krasnoiarsk Territory GAKK The State Archive of Murmansk Province GAMO The National Archive of Sakha-IakutiiaNARS The State Archive of Arkhangel’sk Province GAAO The State Archive of Sverdlovsk Province GASO

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